Contractor criticizes new federal jobs Web site

A federal human resources contractor on Thursday blamed some agencies' recruitment difficulties on glitches with the government's new central jobs Web site, USAJobs.

Avue, a Tacoma, Wash.-based hiring services firm, issued a letter to its federal customers Thursday describing some of the shortcomings of the the federal jobs Web site that the Office of Personnel Management launched Aug. 4. Avue contracts with 30 federal agencies that use its Web portal to post their job listings. The agencies include the Coast Guard, Library of Congress and the Forest Service.

"It is becoming increasingly apparent that, despite OPM's positive spin campaign in the press, the new USAJobs site is a step backward and has deep-seated problems that are not likely to be completely cured for the foreseeable future," Avue officials said in the letter. "As a result, we believe it is imperative for agencies to adopt procedures that take into account the significant disabilities of the new USAJobs site."

OPM officials have touted the new USAJobs Web site as more user-friendly than the previous version and said it should help streamline the federal hiring process. According to OPM, more than 3 million visitors have clicked on the Web site since it was launched earlier this month.

"It's a very clean, crisp site. It's really, I think, using the best technology today and it's really a success," a senior OPM official said Friday.

But an Avue spokesman said some of its customers are experiencing problems making changes to their job listings after they are posted to the USAJobs Web site, as well as finding their posted jobs using the Web site's search engine.

"They are having a real hard time managing things once they have already been posted," said Ted Richane. "For example, if I'm a Coast Guard person and I put it up and three days later I realize, oops, there's something wrong, and want to change the job posting, I can't find it."

These issues are creating more work for agency HR specialists, who wait until the posting expires and then resubmit the job listing. That resubmission requires them to notify people who applied for the job under the initial job listing.

On Friday, senior OPM officials disputed Avue's claims, but said they welcomed any feedback from users on any Web site improvements.

"That is absolutely not the case, it allows agencies to edit job postings, to extend job postings, or cancel postings at any time," the official said. "It's a standard procedure, it's a requirement and it's a mandatory function that we have to offer on the Web site."

The official acknowledged that there may be a learning curve and said OPM had both online and live training sessions available for agency HR specialists, as well as telephone-based customer support available to provide assistance.

"We've had more than 600 jobs that opened on the systems just today alone, so clearly the job function is working," the official said. "We'll continue to tweak, but if anyone is having trouble finding a posting, give us a call. We want to know and we want to work through that issue."

Avue advised its customers to make sure that the job listings on their own Web sites were accurate and updated, and to ask OPM to note on the USAJobs Web site that agency Web sites may contain more current job information.

"No one is out there saying that OPM isn't trying to fix the problem…but USAJobs is just a job posting site," Richane said. "If these are the problems they are having posting jobs, when it turns into a portal through which every application will go through, what happens then? It worries our customers."